Stick a fork in ‘em — Burke and Cristina are done

First of all — really intense episode. The heartbreaking fall of the Burktina empire! George bucking up and electing to remove Burke from his dad’s surgery! Meredith acting happy! That’s the good.

BUT! Really intense episode on Thanksgiving? When people are stuffed to the point of nearly bursting, sleepy from aforementioned gorging on turkey and insane from dealing with the obligatory family fights, nosy relatives and destruction of their homes by other people’s children?

And now, I shall attempt to give the Tubular treatment to the parts of the episode I was lucid and sane enough to comprehend.

George knows about Burke’s hand tremor, and Cristina is a mess trying to figure out how to save both their careers when it all hits the fan. Because with George’s dad scheduled for heart surgery, it’s only a matter of time. Burke won’t cooperate with her, which is just plain stupid on his part because you don’t blow off the woman who’s been keeping your secret and doing your all surgeries for you. Uh-oh; she’s about ready to crack.

It looks like Cristina doesn’t have to say anything when another heart surgeon is spotted in Mr. O’Malley’s room. It’s Burke’s old med school rival, Dr. Erica Hahn, who performed Denny’s surgery after Burke was shot last season. She’s a surgeon at Seattle Presbyterian (could have sworn it was Mercy West last season, but whatever), so why’s she treating a patient at Seattle Grace? Someone must have special-requested her, which doesn’t bode well for Burke’s fate.

It seems like everybody knows that something is up with Cristina and Burke. Even before Dr. Hahn’s arrival, Cristina attempts to confide in Meredith but freaks out instead, giving Mer cause for concern. Even McDreamy, who is unsuccessfully sexing up Meredith when Cristina intrudes, picks up on the fact that something is very wrong. Stupid man — he even goes as far as to ask Burke, “So what’s wrong with you and Cristina?” back at the hospital, like it’s something as simple as,”What are you doing for lunch?” or, “How’s the weather?” Argh. Burke’s an idiot too, but he’s understandably annoyed.

Also working against the Tremorgate conspirators is a car accident that has just filled the ER. Bailey says she needs all hands on deck, excluding Izzie’s hands, which tend to snip LVADs and whatnot. That means Izzie and Cristina must switch places — Izzie on the O’Malley case with Burke (or Hahn, whoever it’s going to be) and Cristina in the ER treating trauma patients.

Izzie is instructed not to scrub in, not to speak to the O’Malleys, not to do any of the inappropriate things she does each week in violation of her probation. At least we can rest assured that she won’t likely be feeling Mr. O’Malley’s pecs.

The victims from the car accident include an 86-year-old man, Mr. Dickerson, who lost control of his car and crashed it into a fish market; and a young pregnant woman, Janelle, who was working at the market. Janelle gets the award for creepiest hospital entrance ever — covered in blood and with a dazed look on her face, she looks like something right out of a horror movie. Dickerson’s wife swears the car pulled a Christine and slammed into the market with no help from her husband. She does, however, feel awful when she sees that Janelle is so badly injured — the Dickersons are longtime customers of Janelle’s.

Mark, Addy and Alex are working on Janelle, who quickly observes that the male docs at Seattle Grace are hot. Addy concurs — “Yep, total man candy.” Janelle is 10 weeks pregnant and debating whether to tell the baby’s father, with whom she is no longer involved. Alex gives her a pearl of wisdom that goes something like, “Even if he was an ass, that doesn’t mean you have to be one.” It gets a very … interested look from Addison. Oh no. Are the rumors true?

In the O’Malley room, we get to meet George’s mom! And all this time I thought she was imaginary. It’s easy to see where George gets his whiny tendencies — he’s a complete mama’s boy, whether he likes it or not. Mama O’Malley is obsessed with ironing things, which is funny because one of George’s reasons for wanting to be Mer’s roommate in season one was his mom’s habit of ironing his scrubs. It turns out that George did indeed choose to call Dr. Hahn and have her replace Burke on the surgery, a decision the O’Malleys don’t question at all — until Izzie gets involved.

One thing I hate about these big, dramatic episodes is that they’re so scant on the funny. At least we get some comic relief from Izzie, who doesn’t seem to understand the concept of probation, and who takes it upon herself to divulge George’s romantic past to his parents. “I’ve seen more of Callie’s body than I’ve seen of my own,” she blabs. “But after what happened between George and Meredith …” Uggghhhh. George might, just might, forgive her for stopping there, but nope — she proceeds to question the decision to replace Dr. Burke on the surgery, which makes the parents rethink their plans.

George is not pleased. Angry George is almost as intolerable as whiny George, in the same way that Tremorgate Cristina is no fun. At least he stands up for himself and puts Izzie in her place. Like, seriously, in her place — as in, “Mom, Dad, did you know the last time Dr. Stevens was allowed to interact with a patient, he wound up dying?” Ouch!

In other George news, now that Callie knows that George knows about her night with McSteamy, she is ready to beat the crap out of the person she thinks told him: Meredith. Just when I thought we’d get through a whole episode with no drama from Mer. Callie storms into the locker room and pins Mer up against the locker, but I must say, scrappy little Mer is putting up a good fight. Izzie intervenes (big surprise): “Whoa, stop. Use your words, Callie,” just like Callie asked George to do when he was afraid of telling her he didn’t want to live together. Meredith manages to tell Callie that she didn’t say a word to George about McSteamy, that in fact it was George who told her. Um, is it too late to say sorry?

When Callie goes to apologize to George for what she did, he doesn’t want to hear it. She stresses that they were broken up and that she was just looking for something to make her feel better, and it didn’t work. I get that George is torn up about his dad and can’t think about the Callie situation right now, but does he have to be such a jerk to her? She was right about telling him not to chase her until he was ready to catch her, because clearly, he’s not ready.

And just when we thought things couldn’t get any crappier for Burke, it’s determined that both Janelle and Dickerson have issues that will require a heart specialist. I know Burke is the head of cardiothoracic, but is he the only heart surgeon on staff? He opts to assist with Janelle’s surgery, since she has a piece of glass piercing her heart; Hahn will take over on Dickerson’s surgery.

Cristina insists on being by his side for Janelle’s surgery, since someone will need to suture her heart after the glass is removed. This wouldn’t be such a tense situation had Burke not verbally beat Cristina down in the on-call room just minutes before, telling her that he’s been covering for her just as much or more than she’s been covering for him, and that he’s tired of dealing with her (completely irrelevant) emotional shortcomings. Ooohh. It makes it hard not to want something bad to happen to Burke …

Uh-oh — there’s that thumping, painstakingly tense music starting as Burke begins working on Janelle. Since their fight, he’s hellbent on proving to Cristina that they are not a team, and that he does not need her to perform his surgeries. He relegates her to the other side of the table and begins stitching the heart himself. The heart seems to be doing OK and then … blood everywhere. All over Cristina’s mask, all over her smock. One of the stitches has burst (due to Burke’s poor suturing?) and the patient needs to go back on bypass for Burke to attempt to repair the damage. Cristina makes a run for it, and we know exactly where she’s going: Chief Webber’s office.

Bailey is stuck in the background for much of this episode, but she does have a fantastic scene with Mrs. Dickerson after Derek reveals it was a spinal condition — not an out-of-control car — that caused her husband’s crash. Mrs. Dickerson feels awful that their daughter sensed he wasn’t able to drive well anymore and took away his keys, but she insisted on giving them back. In her estimation, Janelle and the other victims’ injuries and the possible loss of her husband are all her fault — but even so, Bailey gives her quiet sympathy.

And the business with Alex and Addison? Oh, I suppose it’s time to accept it — the writers are so going to go there. Addison tells Alex that he’s a good guy, which surprises her, and that she doesn’t want him to be tainted by spending too much time around Mark. And they exchange this look, this painfully awkward look that is surely supposed to be sexy. Seriously — does everyone have to sleep with everyone?! And I was actually looking forward to seeing Addison move forward without a man.

It is a relief that none of the non-stop drama in this ep comes courtesy of Meredith and McDreamy — unless you count his desperation for them to finally re-consummate their relationship. Watching them do puzzles together and such is all rather sweet … until the end of the episode, when they do hop into bed together. Ah, so much for waiting.

When Burke finally gets out of surgery and enters the chief’s office, it’s no big surprise that Cristina is already there. The chief wants to have a word with him — I’m guessing that his earlier offer to make Burke chief of surgery is being rescinded, and that won’t be the only consequence.

It’s such a sad moment when Cristina sees Mer and George outside the hospital and tells them that she realizes she can’t go home. I halfway expect them to invite her to crash with them, since everyone else has at some point, but she sucks it up and goes back to Burke’s place. He’s in the bedroom changing the bedsheets (or so it appears) when he spies her outside the door. He walks over to her and — Is he going to hug her? Slap her? (gulp) Choke her?

He slams the door on her. Consider this the end of Tremorgate, the end of Burktina and the end of the only relationship that’s remained somewhat consistent since season one. Consider this Grey’s Anatomy‘s way of saying, “Happy Thanksgiving.” I’m not sure if it’s the show or the overabundance of holiday food, but I feel sick.